Margaret Lindsay, Lady Huggins (born in 1848 in Dublin; died in 1915), born Margaret Lindsay Murray, was an Irish scientific investigator and amateur astronomer. With her husband William Huggins

William Huggins

Sir William Huggins, OM, KCB, FRS was an English amateur astronomer best known for his pioneering work in astronomical spectroscopy.-Biography:...

 she was a pioneer in the field of spectroscopy

Spectroscopy

Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between matter and radiated energy. Historically, spectroscopy originated through the study of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength, e.g., by a prism. Later the concept was expanded greatly to comprise any interaction with radiative...

.

When Huggins was young, her mother died and her father remarried. Margaret's grandfather taught her the constellations, tuition which she supplemented with her own readings. When she married in 1875 to William Huggins

William Huggins

Sir William Huggins, OM, KCB, FRS was an English amateur astronomer best known for his pioneering work in astronomical spectroscopy.-Biography:...

, they began publishing joint papers. She was the first to discover that the nebula

Nebula

A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen gas, helium gas and other ionized gases...

e inside the Orion Nebula

Orion Nebula

The Orion Nebula is a diffuse nebula situated south of Orion's Belt. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light...

 is superheated oxygen

Oxygen

Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...

 and not a solid

Solid

Solid is one of the three classical states of matter . It is characterized by structural rigidity and resistance to changes of shape or volume. Unlike a liquid, a solid object does not flow to take on the shape of its container, nor does it expand to fill the entire volume available to it like a...

 at all.

Huggins was a contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition

Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition

The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time...

.

External links

• Obituary - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1916, volume 76, pages 276–282.
• Bibliography from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
  Astronomical Society of the Pacific
  The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is a scientific and educational organization, founded in San Francisco on February 7, 1889. Its name derives from its origins on the Pacific Coast, but today it has members all over the country and the world...